Oldal 107 [107]
The Arab Other in Turkish Political Cartoons, 1908—1939
Nadir’s cartoon is titled Manda’nin basina gelenler! (“What happened to the
buffalo!’), accented by a literary form of exclamation commonly used when tell¬
ing a story.‘ Similar to a story well told (that can make us laugh, weep, swell with
pride, or fill with indignation), Nadir employs all the racially and culturally specific
subject positions to produce the image of the Arab as the colonial Other. He sets
his story on the shores of the Arabian desert, where the Mediterranean’s blue meets
the yellow of the desert. The exact geographic location is unclear, but the symbolic
colours accentuate the scenery as “Arab” lands. At the centre of the rectangular
cartoon we see a giant manda (‘buffalo’), with unusually big blue eyes, lying on its
side. It alternately huffs and puffs from its nostrils the contradictory words tavzih
(‘evidence’) and tekzip (‘denial’). To underline the buffalo’s French identity, Nadir
draws a tricolour flower on its head. Assaulting the manda from all sides are vari¬
ous Arab characters of similar physiognomies, eager to butcher it. The ethnicity of
each figure can be surmised not by his physical features, but only by the slightly
differentiating symbols in their attire, such as traditional robes and headgear (fezes
for the Syrians and Egyptians—the latter also with a flag on his robe—and keffiyeh
and turbans for the north Africans of Morocco and Tunisia, the Arabs of Iraq, and
the Saudis of the Arabian deserts). The physiognomy in the portrayal of the Arabs
is employed to form a biological reference to race and criminality (Sufian 2008).
Nadir merely reproduces the archetype of Arabs, which evolved through decades
of visual representations. He represents them as vicious savages, running barefoot
toward the manda, swinging their swords in the air with rage, some already shred¬
ding the animal’s flesh with their knives and guns. With their fleshy red lips and
the white teeth of black Africans, rounded, shifty eyes, black, thin moustaches,
chunky body forms, and dark-skin combinations of north African and Middle
Eastern Arabs, Nadir’s own Arab figures are portrayed as ape-like little monsters.
The cartoon stresses the familiar rationalizations of post-Ottoman Arabs with the
irrational conviction that the Arabs, as an inferior species, are by nature incapable
of self-governance and unfit to benefit from national independence.
Other stereotypes are depicted in the cartoon. A Jew with his hooknose and
moneybag worriedly watches the Arabs from the bottom corner. A British man can
be seen in the upper left gripping the buffalo’ tail from across the sea to aid in its
slaughter. Next to him a German’s head with his Pickelhaube helmet’ peeks out to
spy the scene from between the British and Turkish fronts. Finally, to the German's
right we see a sturdy, well-equipped Turkish soldier manning the armed ramparts
along the frontier pointing towards the main scene, the Middle East, where the
* Manda has a dual meaning in Turkish. The most common is ‘buffalo’, but its secondary meaning as
‘mandate’ was added to Turkish as part of the postwar discourse. In the cartoon, Nadir ridicules France by
comparing it to a buffalo symbolizing the entire mandate system.
> The Pickelhaube, a general word for “headgear” in German, was a spiked helmet worn in the 19" and
20" centuries by the German military. It became a symbol of militaristic Germans in 19" and early to mid
20" century political and war cartoons.
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